Building Partnerships USA is becoming the 1000 Leaders Project! Check back soon for our new website.
Our Belief
The 1000 Leaders Project believes that communities can grow their own leaders – the smart, bold, effective leaders that we need to make our democracy work for everyone. We create unique, transformative training programs to grow these leaders and then we help organizations across the country to use these powerful tools in their own communities.
Communities face a set of challenges in building the level of civic participation required to make change:
- Organizations and constituencies are isolated – both from each other and from the knowledge and resources required to participate equally and constructively at decision-making tables.
- Too few activists who come up through communities believe that they can or should become decision-makers themselves.
- Those who become decision-makers are inadequately prepared for the incredibly difficult task of governing in a way that grows and is enhanced by civic participation.
Our Programs
The 1000 Leaders Project has five programs designed to meet these challenges:
- The Civic Leadership Institute is a two-month training for diverse community activists from different sectors and constituencies to connect them with each other around a shared analysis of the problems in their region, vision for change and strategy for action.
- Values-Based Leadership is a four-day intensive course that drafts the top tier of community activists for roles in public leadership. Committed to developing a new generation of elected and appointed officials, nonprofit directors, clergy members and union leaders, this training is the only one in the country that deepens participants’ commitment to their communities while offering tangible models and pathways for how positions of authority can translate into change for communities.
- Leading a New Way is a two-day course that develops elected officials’ hard skills, technical understanding and strategic savvy to take on the challenges of governance and policy making.
- The Boards and Commissions Service Training recruits and prepares emerging civic leaders to tap the underutilized power of appointed government offices to create greater space for community voices.
- Issue-based workshops: Budget 101 gives stakeholders from grassroots to grasstops an insider’s understanding of the budgets of local governments to move them from fighting each other for resources to creative, collaborative problem-solving. We are also developing workshops on privatization and land use.
All of our programs embolden community leaders by offering them a diverse network of new allies; expert-level research, analysis, policy models and skills; and a unifying vision for change.
